ABSTRACT
The first fifty years of the twelfth century was a period of activity and change in theology, of the liveliest interest to the student of that discipline but most of it little relevant to the history of philosophy. The systematic theology of Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux and their schools was concerned with the clarification of Christian doctrine on the basis of authoritative texts; it strayed into philosophy only when William failed to restrain the logician in him (see above, pp. 132 , 140-1 ; see also below for the contribution of this school to ethics). Hugh of St Victor, who carried on William’s work at that abbey, was a dogmatic systematizer in his De sacramentis and his miscellaneous sentences and an educational encyclopedist in his Didascalion. In the first book of this work he applies a vague, Christianized Platonism to educational theory.
